Biography

I grew up beside the sea surrounded by crumbling Victorian architecture, a mile of golden sand, and three piers full of amusement arcades and sticky food. Cool, gliding shapes of 1930′s modernism nestled among the towering spaghetti girders of rollercoaster rides and cable cars. Wurlitzer-powered ballroom dancers floated on air, above a circus, zoo and aquarium. The audacity of Illuminated open-topped trams dressed as spaceships, grown men dressed as bridesmaids and a cup of tea for 5p is, for me, still powerful and vivid.

There’s a surreal incongruity to the place. Its brash, clash of colours and bold shapes have definitely informed my work and even now some twenty odd years later, I can still feel it buzzing away behind each and every brushstroke.